Friday, December 29, 2006

Electric Cars Have Been Around Since the 1880s

The car of the future runs completely on electricity. No more dependence on gas. No morechoking the atmosphere with fumes. Whenever the possibility of electric cars is raised, the mediaand other commentators ooh and ahh over the potential. But this technology isn't futuristic — it'spositively retro. Cars powered by electricity have been on the scene since the 1800s and actuallypredate gas-powered cars.A blacksmith in Vermont — Thomas Davenport — built the first rotary electric motor in 1833and it to power a model train the next year. In the late 1830s, Scottish inventor Robert Davidsonrigged a carriage with an electric motor powered by batteries. In his Pulitzer-nominated bookTaking Charge, archaeology professor and technology historian Michael Brian Schiffer writesthat this "was perhaps the first electric car."After this remarkable achievement, the idea of anelectric car languished for decades. In 1881, aFrench experi-menter debuted a personal vehiclethat ran on electricity, a tricycle (ie, three wheelsand a seat) for adults. In 1888, many inventors inthe US, Britain, and Europe started creating three-and four-wheel vehicles — which could carry twoto six people — that ran on electricity. These

vehicles remained principally curios-ities until May 1897, when the Pope ManufacturingCompany — the country's most successful bicycle manufacturer — started selling the firstcommercial electric car: the Columbia Electric Phaeton, Mark III. It topped out at fifteen milesper hour, and had to be recharged every 30 miles. Within two years, people could choose from anarray of electrical carriages, buggies, wagons, trucks, bicycles, tricycles, even buses andambulances made by numerous manufacturers.New York City was home to a fleet of electric taxi cabs starting in 1897. The Electric VehicleCompany eventually had over 100 of them ferrying people around the Big Apple. Soon it wasunleashing electric taxis in Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, and Washington DC. By 1900,though, the company was in trouble, and seven years later it sputtered out.As for cars powered by dead dinosaurs, Austrian engineer Siegfried Marcus attached a one-cylinder motor to a cart in 1864, driving it 500 feet and thus creating the first vehicle powered bygas (this was around 25 years after Davidson had created the first electro-car). It wasn't until1895 that gas autos — converted carriages with a two-cylinder engine — were commerciallysold (and then only in microscopic numbers).Around the turn of the century, the average car buyer had a big choice to make: gas, electric, orsteam? When the auto industry took form around 1895, nobody knew which type of vehicle wasgoing to become the standard. During the last few years of the nineteenth century and the firstfew of the twentieth, over 100 companies placed their bets on electricity. According to Schiffer,"Twenty-eight percent of the 4,192 American automobiles produced in 1900 were electric. In theNew York automobile show of that year more electrics were on display than gasoline or steamvehicles."In the middle of the first decade of the 1900s, electric cars were on the decline, and their gas-eating cousins were surging ahead. With improvements in the cars and their batteries, though,electrics started a comeback in 1907, which continued through 1913. The downhill slide startedthe next year, and by the 1920s the market for electrics was "minuscule," to use Schiffer's word.Things never got better.Many companies tried to combine the best of both approaches, with cars that ran on a mix ofelectricity and gas. The Pope Manufacturing Company, once again in the vanguard, built aworking prototype in 1898. A Belgian company and a French company each brought outcommercial models the next year, beating the Toyota Prius and the Honda Insight to the marketby over a century. Even Ferdinand Porsche and the Mercedes Company got in on the act.Unfortunately, these hybrids never really caught on.Didik Design — which manufactures several vehicles which run on various combinations offelectricity, solar power, and human power — maintains an extensive archive on the history ofelectric and electro-fuel cars. According to their research, around 200 companies and individualshave manufactured electric cars. Only a few familiar names are on the list (although some ofthem aren't familiar as car manufacturers): Studebaker (1952-1966), General Electric (1901-1904), Braun (1977), Sears, Roebuck, and Company (1978), and Oldsmobile (1896 to thepresent). The vast majority have long been forgotten: Elecctra, Pfluger, Buffalo Automobile

Company, Hercules, Red Bug, and Nu-Klea Starlite, to name a few. Henry Ford and ThomasEdison teamed up on an electric car, but, although some prototypes were built, it never wascommercially produced. Though they have faded from mass cultural memory, electric cars havenever been completely out of production.The reasons why electrics faded into obscurity while gas cars and trucks became 99.999 percentdominant are complex and are still being debated. If only they hadn't been sidelined and hadcontinued to develop apace, the world would be a very different place.